November Drawing – Day 21, Colors for a Victorian Mermaiden

 

Colors!

How would you color a Victorian Mermaiden?

 
When I first started working on this drawing in Adobe Illustrator Draw, I went with a very different color scheme – muted pinks and greens. But I’ve been using those colors a lot lately, so I decided to change things up for the second go around.

For inspiration, I looked at images of octopi. A lot of the images I saw had a lot of oranges, hot blues, maroons and purples, and occasionally some bright golden yellows. I played with that for a while and came up with a color scheme I think will work – dark reddish browns, primrose yellows, bright aquas, and dark oranges. I think it works, but I’m still working out how I’ll use those colors throughout the entire drawing.

One thing that will help is Concepts color wheel. Concepts uses Copic colors. When you select a color, it will also show a list of different shades or tints of that color. In the image above, you can see the all the shades and tints for the dark reddish brown I chose. I’m using the lightest shade of thatfor the ruffled trim on the dress, and I used two other shades of that for the top hat. I’m doing the same with the other colors as well, and it seems to be working out.

So I’ll keep working at the colors on this one. I’m still working on the other mermaid, the one with all the long flowing red hair. That hair is just killing me, but I’m determined to get it done. And I’ve got the Pirate Queen set up as an SVG file, so I think the last week of this month, I’m going to take that drawing and any others I’ve finished and clean them up then post them someplace where people can get prints. I’m thinking maybe Society 6 for these, although I could also set them up as shirts on Threadless or cards and other items on Zazzle. I don’t really know yet. I’ll figure it out, and let you know.

November Drawing – Day 20, Robots, Mermaids and Coloring Pages

Ta-daa! Patricia colored my beat up old robot not once, but twice! First, there’s this guy…

 

Wrong droid!

“But how do you KNOW you’re not the droid we’re looking for?”

 
And then there’s this guy!

 

Acid-bot!

It’s a robot on acid!

 
I can’t decide which one I like better. I do know that I love the extra bits of drawing that Patricia added, and now I want her to color ALL my drawings! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ahem… Anyhoo, I did more work today on the Victorian Mermaiden, not to be confused with tthe other mermaids I’ve been working on. How many mermaids did I start this month? And at least one other is still in progress, but she has soooooooo much hair! But this is the Victorian Mermaiden, all inked.

 

An inky mermaiden!

What lovely inks you have, my dear!

 
I love how the lines came out on this one. I used the snapping option and the arc tool in some places to draw parts of the tentacles. I love that I can easily switch back and forth between precision and free-hand drawing in Concepts. I plan to start coloring this one tomorrow.

I have another potential coloring page in the works, but I’m not ready to share it just yet. It’s going to be something a little more elaborate, but as soon as I have it ready, I’ll let you all know!

November Drawing – Day 19, I Love Tentacles!

One of the reasons I’ve spent so much time working with Concepts this month is because I’ve been looking for a replacement app for Adobe Ideas. Adobe replaced Adobe Ideas with Adobe Illustrator Draw, which is very nice for drawing with, but…

I cannot export my work in any useable format.

Adobe Ideas allowed users to export their drawings as a vector PDF, which could then be opened in Illustrator or almost any other desktop vector program. Adobe Illustrator Draw will only allow users to export drawings as low resolution PNGs. Unless you own a copy of Adobe Illustrator CC on your desktop. Then you can send Adobe Illustrator Draw images to CC and work on them there. Of course, that’s assuming you have a copy of Adobe CC. Which I don’t.

The end result is that I have some drawings that were half-finished when Adobe made the switch from Ideas to Illustrator Draw. I wasn’t worried initially about it, because Adobe said they would be adding the SVG or PDF export eventually. Well, it’s been about a year since Adobe switched things over, and still no SVG/PDF export. So I am now exporting LOW RESOLUTION PNGS of my half-finished drawings in Adobe Illustrator Draw so I can re-start them (and FINISH them) in Concepts.

And I have to say, the results are pretty good.

 

Victorian Mermaiden!

A lovely Victorian mermaiden!

 
For this image, I was able to go back to the original sketch, done in Sketchbook Pro by Autodesk, and start from the beginning again with the inking and colors. And how does it compare with Adobe Illustrator Draw? Well, here’s the unfinished drawing from that app.

 

Old Victorian Mermaiden

Old Victorian Mermaiden

 
I actually think the inking looks better in the Concepts app. There’s more line variation, and I have more control over each individual line. Plus Concepts has a text tool, which is a nice thing to have!

I got back some images of the busted robot coloring page I did earlier this month. I should be posting those tomorrow. For now, I’m going to watch Doctor Who and relax for the rest of the evening.

November Drawing – Day 17, Pretty Colors

 

Lovecraft wine!

Have a drink and you’ll see pretty colors too.

 
I love desaturated greens and pinks, and these seem like the perfect colors for this drawing. Now that I’ve laid down the flat colors, I’m going to add some details – cross hatching, highlights, shading, more hints of those pretty pinks, greys and greens. Time to have fun!

November Drawing – Day 15, Inking the Bottle

 

Creepy wine!

This is one creepy bottle of wine.

 
Tired again today. We had our monthly Girl Scout troop meeting today. That’s five hours of working with girls on writing scripts, recording audio, adding sound effects, then planning the menu for next month’s cooking badge. Oh, and we made these…

 

Book charms!

What charming little charms!

 
We’ve spent the past couple months learning about media for the “It’s You Story – Tell It!” journey in Girl Scouts. The charms were our way of celebrating finishing that project.

But now I’m dead so I’m going to bed. More drawing tomorrow, I promise!

November Drawing – Day 13, A-Maze-ing Hair and a Bottle

 

Mermaid hair!

Can you find your way through all this hair?

 
I had not intended to add this much detail to her hair, but things kind of got away from me. I expect it will take me the rest of this month to finish the hair and maybe add some details to the dress. I have no idea what I’m doing with the dress yet, but I’ll figure it out!

Meanwhile, I’ve exported the Pirate Queen as an SVG file so I can open it up and tweak it in Corel Draw. And while I do that in the background, I’ve started sketching out something new…

 

Creepy bottle!

No, it’s not a dead plant!

 
This is something inspired by a tweet that came up in a conversation about Lovecraft. I’ve been reading an anthology of Lovecraft at bedtime, and I made a comment about how I find Lovecraft to be the perfect bedtime read because his stories are both creepy and soothing at the same time, and a friend of mine mentioned that would be the perfect description of a very evil bottle of wine. So that’s what I’m drawing, an evil Lovecraftian bottle of wine. Enjoy!

November Drawing – Day 11, Details, Details

I’ve gotten all the line art and base colors done on both the Pirate Queen and the Mermaid drawings, so now I’m working on the details. Lots and lots of details.

First, the Pirate Queen…

 

Pirate Queen!

Her tentacles need spots!!

 
Again, this one is drawn in Concepts on my iPad. I’ve mainly used the pen tool and the filled stroke tool. I’ve been trying to stick to a limited color palette, and I think this one works pretty well.

Now for the Mermaid!

 

Mermaid haid!

I love drawing flowing hair in water.

 
The Mermaid is being drawn in InkPad for the iPad. Again, InkPad is a free app, and one of the best vector apps around. I’m using the brush tool to draw the ink lines and the shapes of the shading, similar to the way I use the filled stroke tool in Concepts. The difference here is that I can adjust each point on the curves of the shapes to get exactly what I want.

So there are two different vector drawings in two different vector apps that are still rather similar but different. Differently similar. You know what I mean. Whatever.